A have a notion of a thought of an idea…

I’m mostly finished with Osinga’s book on Boyd’s theories, Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd.  It’s been interesting, nothing new, but a further illumination of Boyd’s ideas.  The one thing that keeps coming to mind is the connection between Boyd’s thoughts which revolve primarily around uncertainty and how to deal with it, and Taleb’s ideas encapsulated in The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.  I’m not sure what it is, or how to link the two.  I think they both are dealing with the same conceptual issue, and I think they both are approaching it from two different directions, but I’m not sure if they’re coming from slightly different angles or if they’re diametrically opposed.

They both focus on the idea that it’s impossible to know everything, and that unknowable portion is the important part.  Boyd focuses on either decreasing the unknowable by continuing to reorient to it, to be open to it in order to change, and that ignoring it leads to death or failure.  Taleb instead looks at the impact of what we cannot know, and proposes that indeed what you don’t know is very important.  He uses the term black swan for those improbable events with huge impacts.

I look at his ideas and Boyd’s, and I get the feeling that what is being described is simply two sides of the same coin.  Taleb is focused on the environment, he explains what is out there–or more accurately, he explains what we don’t know that’s out there that is going to impact us.  He highlights that there are monsters in the closet, there are risks that can undo everything, even if they have not been seen.  Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence, to use a cliche.  Boyd on the other hand is looking at decision-making, so people and organizations.  He addresses the issue from the context of making decisions based on an ever changing and unpredictable environment. His focus is on dealing with uncertainty, learning to deal with it, learning to use it, learning to cause it for those you want to destroy.

It seems to me that the dire circumstances that Taleb highlights, the black swans that exist that can not be planned for or avoided, are things that Boyd’s theories are tailor-made to address.  It’s not a matter of having contingencies in place for everything, though that’s not necessarily a bad idea, it’s a matter of having the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, no matter how extreme.  Even more so, it’s important to have the ability to spot these circumstances in order to allow that flexibility to function.

How you set this up I’m not sure, but I think Lean Production is one thought.  Decentralized control, allowing those closest to the proverbial fire make decisions is another thought.  Then again, that’s not the point.  At some point I’ll have to dig further into both Boyd and Taleb and see if I can draw more mental bridges.

If We Can Keep It

Almost done with Chet Richards newish book on national security and grand strategy, among other things.  It’s interesting and thought provoking, but I want to focus on a few topics.  The first of these is the concept of shi.  Like most all Chinese words, this has layers of meaning, of which Richards focuses on one.  “The third aspect of shi is about developing a favorable situation with great potential to achieve the political objectives.”  It’s not nearly as much about reaching out to change things, though this can and should be done, but about building oneself up, increasing one’s “strategic solvency.”  A more tangible example would be instead of adventures in Iraq, repairing the United States’ infrastructure, repairing Social Security and Medicaid.  There are good steps, but are more physical than what I think the idea is.  It’s about Boyd’s idea of grand strategy; increasing our resolve, decreasing our opponents.  strengthening our allies, drawing in the undecided.  It is very hard to damage the enemy, while strengthening ourselves is a much easier task to approach (we know the subject much better at least) and then we can wait for our enemies to screw up and take advantage of that weakness.  This also ties into the issue of being the aggressor or the aggressee.  Attacking immediately casts a pall over everything, even if done with the best of intentions.  Responding to an attack draws sympathy and support from even supposed enemies and provides a lot of room to make more friends than enemies, to reverse the adage about Germany.

The second point is the concept of formlessness which I had conceptualized in The Dancing Wu Li Masters.  It takes quantum physics and shows that our best guess as to the ‘workings of a clock we cannot see the insides of’ is that objects at their smallest level are not objects, but instead are relationships, possibilities and interactions.  What happens to one will potentially influence the actions of another, and possibly something quite removed from the object being observed.  (I’m still hazy on it, Bell’s Theory I think, going to need to dig further)

Another part is that there is only form and structure when the objects are being observed, until then it’s all only potentials, which leads to a number of different conclusions.  I’m not sure how this links to what follows, but I feel on some level (Fingerspitzengefuehl) that this is connected to the idea of creation and destruction, of swarms and of formlessness being the epitome of strength.  Boyd’s destruction and creation is all about building an idea or model, synthesizing it out of differing parts, testing it, using it, then destroying it and building anew in order to better adapt to a changing and chaotic world.  (oversimplification I think, but not a bad explanation)  Forms are seen, and used, but they are not things to be cherished, simply the latest iteration that is hopefully most effective.  They will be discarded as soon as we’ve come up with a better way.  This sounds great in theory, unfortunately people become attached to ideas which were good but are past their time which helped take the person to where they are, even if not adapting leads to obsolescence.  It’s fighting the last war and building a Maginot line, instead of figuring out how to concur more with less (blitzkrieg).

This all ties into swarms, as represented by insurgencies, specifically in this instance in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The US military is tied to one form, overwhelming, conventional force.  The insurgents know they will lose against this force in any direct confrontation, so they take on a new form with IEDs and suicide bombers.  The US military adapts with roadblocks, checkpoints and better humvees, the insurgents get better bombs, more remote detonations, non military targets.  This is only one prism of the conflict (and not the best since it’s solely the military side, but it’s on the mind), but the insurgents are better suited to adapting.  They have a swarm approach, an individual is no threat when examined, but together they learn and adapt and overcome a stronger opponent by being as formless as possible, testing solutions and quickly spreading what works until it doesn’t, then testing some more.  It also ties into the Darwinian Ratchet where only the smart and capable survive.  The military on the other hand is tied to tradition and hierarchy and top down leadership.  It is very committed to one form, and changing is a matter of years. No matter the pressure, nothing short of catastrophe on an immense scale could get the military to adapt at the same speed as an insurgency, there’s too much institutional inertia to allow this, too many pieces and players against allowing control to slide to the lower levels.

This all raises several questions; How to become that flexible, (short of a crisis, if possible)  How to avoid being in such a position, and lastly how to not let this advantage defeat us? The first two are simple though difficult, major surgery on the DoD and our grand strategy.  The third option is a bird of a different feather; though the idea to fight the insurgency instead of the insurgents is not a bad start.  (Chet Richards touches on this in the book, and I think I’ll try explore the idea tomorrow)

Legacy of Ashes

I’m not very good at writing new posts.  Having no one else looking at it does not help the motivation. Then again having people reading my writing used to be the quickest way to get me to not write, so this may be untenable no matter how I look at it.

Anyways, I’ve been reading rather prolifically lately.  I just finished Legacy of Ashes about the CIA, and it was quite interesting.  It’s amazing that an organization with almost no major successes for the first decade of its existence kept receiving high levels of funding and support.  It also highlighted that problems tend to revolve around people, not money or technology or ideas even (though ideas can be powerful in and of themselves).  First in trying to establish contacts and build a network of intelligence and espionage agents in unfriendly places of the world (which was hit or miss, but then again the KGB was working directly against the CIA, which had just started, so somewhat understandable).  Even worse though was after the organization had had the time and funding to build a viable program, they lacked the ability to acquire and train enough quality people to be able to accomplish anything really.  It comes down to the basic question of how to motivate someone to go spend the prime of their lives mucking about with no creature comforts, no recognition, in a hostile country where screwing up would end up bad for the person and embarrassing for the country.  So instead of these sorts of people who would give the CIA a fighting chance, it ended up (mostly) with bureaucrats, which has only gotten worse with the privatization of the intelligence community.

Then there’s the antagonism between the espionage side and the intelligence side, which to me is odd since the only way to have a hope of espionage being successful (let alone having any understanding at all even of the immediate consequences, successful or not) is if a certain level of knowledge has already been obtained on the area of interest.  Without that, it’s like shooting in the dark, success might come about with enough money and brute force, but it’s not going to stay hidden, and the consequences are going to be worse than the rewards even in a successful operation.

There are other thoughts, but the last is on the antagonism shown by the military throughout the history of the CIA.  First in keeping its intelligence from the CIA (which was originally created to oversee the nation’s efforts) to then trying to subvert and destroy the CIA, (taking over the NRO, having generals and admirals run the CIA, and finally succeeding in it being relegated to second tier status with the CIA director losing his seat on the NSC).  competition is good, but this level of infighting (sometimes seen between services also) can only be counterproductive.

There’s more, but my thoughts aren’t entirely organized.  How to get good intelligence, how to not let individuals ignore analysis and stamp their opinions on reports, how to keep the president from ignoring advice or swaying the organization away from unbiased reporting, all are lessons to be drawn from the book.  I don’t know what the answer is on any of them other than finding the right people for the job, or possibly starting from scratch, which seems a waste.  Though then you have to balance the pains of learning the wheel anew and losing half a century of expertise, and the struggles of overturning the culture, history, habits and prejudices of an organization as secretive and tribal as the CIA.  There might be a third option, but I’m not sure what it is.

Clauswitz

I just finished On War by Clauswitz,  and I am very glad to be finished.  (I’m rewarding myself with new books).  It was a worthwhile read, something anyone involved at a decently high level in the military (or related to the military) should be required to read.  There are points he makes that I think we attribute to him, but then we skew them or simplify them or portray them in a manner that at best is somewhat related to the original idea, and at worst is the opposite.  Economy of Force is the one that immediately comes to mind.   The Air Force’s position is that economy of force is utilizing the exact right amount of force, in direct conflict with mass, trying to be stingy with troops.  Clauswitz on the other hand talks about being economical with troops by not wasting any of them.  Even if the parts of your army are not pursuing the best option they can, at least have them actively pursuing something and hopefully tying up the enemy to some extent.  This is completely contrary to the Air Force’s idea, and is in full accord with mass.  There are other points also, but mostly just need to keep in mind his thoughts on grand strategy I think (war is too important to leave to the generals) and also that there are no tried and true rules, and even if there were, there’d be an exception or three to them.  It’s a matter of assessing every situation as it comes in the unique context in which it exists and making a judgment.  Prior knowledge and basic tenets of war can help shape the approach, but should not serve as a narrow path.  And once again back to Lao Tsu according to Pratchett “Mine is but a simple way, but it is my way” or something of the sort.

After Education

I was halfway through Corbett’s Principles of Maritime Strategy after reading Mahan’s Influence of Seapower upon History and something struck me as I compared the ideas of the books. Classes I had taken in college studied both authors, their ideas and theories. After developing an understanding of them we applied them to realms outside of the sea, in this case using them to build ideas for space power theory. Yet throughout this we never challenged the ideas that we were taught. We never read or saw these two books, and yet we took for fact that Mahan was solely for large, decisive naval battles (which he is) while Corbett advocates protecting your sea lines of communication (which he does). Yet this definition of these competing ideas was at best incomplete, at worst dishonest. Mahan establishes the idea of a naval power, and especially in the situation Britain was in during his era needing to dominate the seas and that the best way was through a decisive naval battle. Corbett agrees with this idea wholeheartedly. The only difference is that Corbett then goes on to admit that when you’ve gained the superiority Mahan suggests is necessary, it will become next to impossible to have a decisive naval battle. This leads to needing to find other ways to be effective, thus protecting SLOCS and setting up situations where the enemy perceives weakness and risks their ships.

The whole point I guess is that while we had the gist of what was going on, we lacked the background to question what we were told, and were never made to feel like we should acquire this background. We questioned things, but always in the boundaries that had been established. I think back through my schooling, and it seems this has always been the case. Read the textbook. Listen to the teacher. What we say is truth. It always has been and it always will be so. I see this as a problem. It is part of why I am writing this, to have a place to organize my thoughts, get them on paper (metaphorically) so I can look at them later and see if they make sense at all. So then the question becomes how do we lift the veil from our eyes. It’s one thing to go out on my own and go to the source in order to form my own opinions and have enough background to make them opinions I can support. I do not know what the answer is, but I think I at least have what I might consider a respectable question which is a start.

Gotta start somewhere

I’ve started writing this because I want a place to have my thoughts, ideas and questions stored. I’ll forget them or get them all jumbled up if I rely on memory alone, and any place that depends either on me keeping track of it, or my computer not failing would end up with me losing everything every half year or so.

I got to the point where I couldn’t accept what I saw and knew to be wrong or contrary or stupid, the only problem was I didn’t know how to fix things from the position I held (and still don’t). This caused me to go looking for a solution. One thing led to another and I started on a cycle of learning that continues to point to more and more things I want to figure out, more sources I want to comprehend, and more problems to be figured out. I am still very much in the first few rotations of this cycle, and nothing may come of it, but this maybe is a start to having a record of me figuring things out. Though that only tends to compound the problem. John Boyd stated that “Progress is achieving a higher level of confusion” which is as good a way to look at this as any I guess.

Now this still begs the question of just what I will be writing. I do not know. Right now I flip between comments on current world issues and things I read, questions that I am unable to answer and which may not have a satisfactory answer and books and authors I feel might be worth looking into. It all has a decidedly military and geopolitical bent, but that’s fitting. It might extend to other things, or maybe not, we’ll see.

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